Released in July of 1992, four years after my birth, the derivative, yet for me seminal, Duke Nukum (Nukem in other iterations) changed the way by which I understood video games. Mechanically similar to Commander Keen, a title I began playing mere months before, Duke Nukum differed in that it was one of the first, if not the first, game that I truly remember exhibiting any kind of authorial story in the sense of how we understand video game narratives today. Yes, of course it was rudimentary and is still quite so, and yes many narrative games preceded it – Oregon Trail, Zork, Mega Man, and Commander Keen to name a few. And yes, Nukum’s stereotypical, re-hash narrative left much to be desired, but it was there, and I was there, and it told me something that connected with me and gave me something I had yet, by that time, to grasp.

What that something was, I’m not sure even now.

Duke Nukem had episodes much like Commander Keen. However, unlike Keen, I had the distinct privilege of actually playing them beyond the free shareware versions. I would play an episode over and over again as I waited for my father to bring home the next shareware floppy disc from work. I would wait patiently – and in agony – for that floppy to transfer its minute bits of data to our computer for minutes upon insufferable minutes. And then I would play for hours.

I don’t think I ever beat all of the episodes…

Naturally, the next step was to play Duke Nukem II. Wait, what? Nukem? I thought it was Duke Nukum? They had changed the name; surely they hadn’t changed the game. The day my father brought it home I eagerly, yet dubiously loaded up the game and sat poised for utter disappointment. I was scared, frightened. What if everything I loved about Duke was gone, throw into some ephemeral digital dumpster and forgotten…

Suddenly, I was greeted with a…movie? I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a movie – although rudimentary and nothing like the full FMVs of games such as Wing Commander and Command & Conquer – and Duke Nukem had a… voice? I watched, enraptured by the, in retrospect, pedantic, silly storyline and paltry animations. But back then it was cutting edge, back then it was a new frontier. I leaned forward in my seat, started a fresh game, and dove into a novel world.

Immediately, the improved graphical fidelity and quality wowed my eyes; it was still the same Duke Nukum, ahem, Nukem, that I remembered, that familiar and seminal 2D side-scrolling experiential aesthetic, but it was different, invigorating, and gorgeous. The sound quality was stellar: every BAM, and SWOOSH, and EEK, rang out in what seemed like Dolby 5.1 surround sound. Duke could duck now and shoot upwards at the minions crawling jaggedly on the ceilings. There were power-ups more powerful than any in the original and in the very first stage nonetheless; there was rapid-fire and spiraling rockets and checkpoints. By God, the game had checkpoints…

I played nonstop until the fateful day my father came home, smacked a new, shining floppy disc on the computer desk, and said something along the lines of “Son, this is going to blow your mind.” Well, maybe he didn’t utter those exact words, but that’s how I like to remember it as I stared at that bloated radioactive symbol plastered across the disc with the words DUKE NUKEM: 3D sprawled underneath it.

3D? It had to be a typo. It must. In my mind I could no easier rationalize the concept of a three-dimensional Duke running and gunning down alien hordes and saving the most certainly doomed world any better than I could rationalize that there was a such thing as a multiplication table or Sasquatch or a dire need to eat mayonnaise.

But it was no typo. Like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Descent before it, Duke Nukem was 3D, engulfing, and frenetic. Yes, I had played those aforementioned titles before it, so, consequently, I understood the inherent paradigm of the game’s mechanics, but unlike those predecessors, Duke 3D connected with me in some disparate way, some way that engendered in me a greater, deeper love for it. Perhaps it was the brief, rough shot history my young self shared with the franchise as a whole. Or, which is much more likely, perhaps Duke Nukem embodied the super-soldier, steroid ridden action-hulk I saw on the big-screen in films such as Commando, Predator, and The Quest. Perhaps it was that I could finally play that hero, be that hero.

The difference between Duke Nukem 3D and those aforementioned monoliths of gaming history was that this was The Duke, The Duke reimagined. Instead of some gruff, faceless, emotionless protagonist, I knew that behind the blazing guns was a tough-as-steel, blonde-haired rogue, an urban scalawag that was never afraid of anyone or anything. Moreover, now The Duke spoke, a lot. He wasn't just some other faceless automaton in some other game world. He had personality. And albeit nearly every syntactical utterance came in the form of some cheeky, often crude one-liner glossed in a bath of bad-assery, he spoke and that was more than any other digital protagonist I had experienced up until that point. The aesthetical and authorial personality that bled not only into the diegesis of the game, but also into the character of Duke Nukem, endeared him, the world, to me.

It wouldn’t be until much, much later that I could truly appreciate the Duke Nukem franchise, and especially Duke Nukem: 3D, for its more Meta, provocative, and adult properties. Metanarrative references to cultural icons such as Schwarzenegger and Van Dam I got. However, such references to films such as Scarface, Blade Runner, and Die Hard, books such as Fahrenheit 451, and music such as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon were utterly lost on me. Moreover, most of the adult content, especially the strippers, I just really didn’t get at the time.

Then, I was too busy blasting alien scum into oblivion. Then, I was too busy being an action hero.